having the right to bear arms meant that a foreign power or be a overreaching central government would have to think twice before quartering soldiers in our houses without permission or imposing through force policy that is a vast majority of americans wanted to resist to the death. bearing arms is a symbol we're a free people and we control our own destiny. guns became powerful cultural symbol passed from parents to children that includes a respect for nature and a hunting culture that values self-sufficiency and natural food. for the longest time the gun control debate pitted mostly rural americans against urban elites who sometimes fail to respect rural values. i ran for congress in a district with a strong second amendment tradition and i have been around guns my entire life. but i saw the knee-jerk extremism that the right wing caricature of gun control caused with extremist groups like the nra asking, well, what about guns in bars. if you don't support it, you're an enemy of the second amendment. what about guns in church, at the hospital. what about buying ten guns at once? demo